Saturday, August 06, 2011

On That Samara and the Writer’s Trust of Canada Contest

...to anoint the best Canadian political book of the past 25 years, which wound up anointing Ezra Levant's Shakedown.  Discussions of the significance of this choice, such as the one John Geddes attempts  here, are pointless.  The contest winner was determined by an on-line poll, and the poll got Freeped.  Tory forums directed readers to the contest website, and true believers who never read the book voted for it 10 times.  Word later went out that the contest organizers were approaching progressive blogs to popularize the contest and hopefully scare up anti-Ezra voters, and indeed I received an email from them about a week before the contest deadline.

Which I promptly ignored.  You organize a contest in this manner, this is the kind of result you deserve.  Eat it, Samara.

PS. Here's an account of the contest  that mentions the Levant Vs. Vigna lawsuit.

7 comments:

Jules Aimé said...

"Tory forums directed readers to the contest website ..."

That's true enough but a lot of liberal forums did likewise so it's kind of a wash.

bigcitylib said...

Not a lot of liberal forums, as far as I know, and I did keep watch. And not in as nearly determined a manner. Freeping is far more common on the right then on the left. I, for example, would have a hard time voting for books I hadn't read. Readers of Free D typically have no such compunctions.

Mark Richard Francis said...

I too received a notice asking me to vote. I did not do so, for the same reasons as BCL.

Conservative activists amuse me with their "I-believe-in-personal-responsibility-and-will-stay-so-uninformed-as-to-not-even-read-Levant's-misleading-diatribe-yet-vote-for-it" contradictions.

Deen said...

I wonder what was the best selling book of the list or the most critically acclaimed? Anyone know the rankings of that?

For a guy who takes revenge for earth day on a house plant and dresses in a niqab to prove he is uncomfortable in some muslim women's attire, I assumed he couldn't read let alone write a book.

Kudos to him!

Holly Stick said...

Love the way rightwingers cheat on online polls, then convince themselves that the same polls show them to be in the majority. As Dante put it, they have lost the good of the intellect.

Anonymous said...

Something similar happened when the Beaver Magazine ran an online poll to name "The Worst Canadian". The same maroons who voted for Levant's poorly written and intellectually dishonest book name Pierre Trudeau the worst Canadian, beating out, among others, Clifford Olson and Paul Bernardo. Second place went to Chris Hannah, the lead singer of Winnipeg punk-rock band, Propaghandi, who embraced the contest in all its absurdity, urging fans to vote for him early and often.

Unknown said...

Like BCL I did not waste my vote for those books.


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